The big advantage to a factory OC is the warranty remains intact and the card boots to the OC every time. The solid 100MHz Factory overclock will give you an advantage over a non-overclocked retail card. The devil is in the details with video cards and if you believe a reference card design plain Jane is as good as an aftermarket modified card you need to re-evaluate your thoughts. While the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SuperClocked ACX 2.0+ features a reference board design that’s where the resemblance to a reference GTX 980 TI stops. Laying down looking at the top you get a peek at the SHP (Straight Heat Pipes), the dual vane sub-cowling heat sinks and the 8 and 6 Pin PCI-E power connectors. Now take a look at the cooling vanes, each and every vane is perfectly aligned and allows heated air to exhaust evenly avoiding those pesky hot spots. Peeking down in the GPU’s depths you can see EVGA went with two separate blocks of heatsinks with two distinct sets of cooling veins. While there is no doubt that EVGA makes some of the best GPU’s on the planet in our opinion they have engineered the best all in one cooling solution with ACX 2.0+. With this improved cooling you get a 20% cooler GPU. Along with the superbly engineered fans EVGA uses a SHP (Straight Heat Pipe) setup to gain another 6% cooling advantage. (Trust us when we drop the overclocking bomb you’ll see why this cooling solution deserves more air time than it gets. EVGA has been using a MMCP (Memory Mosfet Cooling Plate) that provides 15% cooler memory and 13% cooler Mosfets. The fan blades are 7 times as strong as typical fan blades yet 25% lighter so we suspect some magical fan blade composite material or a hybrid material, we’ve speculated that they use a radioactive spiders silk to add strength. The double ball bearings provide double duty and 4x the lifespan with 20% better efficiency. It might take a minute for the reason for this to sink in but EVGA uses a 3-Phase / 6 slot Motor to power the fan which typically uses 250% lower power. Each Fan will stop spinning when the GPU is under 60☌ providing 0dB operation. Without going to the graphic well it’s near impossible to describe the depth of the ACX 2.0+ cooling system so we borrowed from EVGA to better detail the depth of this superior cooling solution. We’ve never had to replace an EVGA aftermarket fan and in the hot dusty desert environment that should tell you a lot about the dedication to quality EVGA has for their fans. We have a supply of replacement fans from EBAY and friendly donations that fills a tough tote and replace GPU fans on a regular basis on older model GPU’s. The lab here is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert in the Phoenix West Valley area, we call it Death Valley 2 and you can trust us when we tell you these EVGA double ball bearing fans can cut the mustard. The fans are double ball bearing with 4x the lifespan of standard fans. We put a standard PCI-E connector cover in front of one of the two fans to give you an idea of exactly how large the ACX 2.0+ cooling solution. We got one look at the dual fans on the EVGA GTX 980Ti SuperClocked ACX 2.0+ and almost drove to Vegas to find a drive through wedding chapel but when we ask the GPU to marry us we go no answer so we settled in for some intensive photo shooting. It did prompt us to go looking for ACX 2.0+ information which we will cover in a short while. “Yes you are looking at the impossible made possible, the dream GPU fallen from your slumber and cranking out test rig numbers.” In that fleeting moment you realize you are in GPU Nirvana that mystical place born of hairs standing up on your neck.Īrriving in a Typical EVGA black box there was little on the box to alert us of such a ground shaking mind bending experience inside the box. Copious amounts of RockStar consumed as we listened to that little voice coming from our shoulders. This is one of those times when phone calls were exchanged at odd hours of the night verifying numbers were in line with other cards. Then we see numbers insanely high and move that cup of coffee to a side table away from all hardware and re-run those most familiar tests again and again then switch test rigs and run them yet again as we stare in disbelief. We run a few well known oft used benchmarks that we know the numbers from various models of GPU’s by heart. Evga precision x voltage control 980ti full#Then there is that rare time when the photos are done and edited, the information is gathered, tables full of numbers and comparisons are built and ready for digital paper, when we finally fill a test rigs PCI-E 16x slot with the GPU. You can generally beat on one of us with a 3 foot long fence post made out of various GPU’s and we’ll yawn and wonder what flavors the Keurig coffee maker station has today. We are going to take a look at the EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC with ACX 2.0+ Cooling and we feel the need to tell you right up front that it’s hard as nails to impress a hard core reviewer.
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